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But for this ICE News Release, you probably wouldn't have known that "a potential vulnerability has been neutralized," to wit, undocumented janitors toiling away in Florida state office buildings.
And in related news, ICE put the big chill on undocumented tomato pickers in New York. These workers, prior to being deported, will be criminally prosecuted for using fake green cards or social security cards.
By any sane measure, California’s correctional system is in deep trouble. The Modesto Bee reminds us that it’s also shrouded in secrecy---and has been ever since 1995 when then-Governor Pete Wilson got tired of critical stories about prison abuse and solved that vexing little problem by all but locking out the press. Now with the system in ever greater chaos, even CA legislators are made nervous by the lack of light, and are mulling over a bill to lift the ban.
Texas lawmakers look at charges of abuse and neglect at the Evins Juvenile Center in Edinburg, TX, reports KGBT 4 TV. They find multi years worth of “mistreatment incidents,” a bare two weeks of training for guards, 12-year-olds housed with 18-year-old sex offenders, and more writes LYNN BREZOSKY for AP.
One year later in post-Katrina New Orleans, while the poor are still taking by far the biggest hit, the devastation is felt in all quarters. Here’s an interesting take on the world of NOLA attorneys in private practice by LEIGH JONES for the National Law Journal.
Meanwhile, back in criminal court, New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan, who has been getting deservedly slammed for allowing such a monster backlog of cases to pile up for the past year without charges or arraignments, walks out on an ABC Nightline interview with Brian Ross writes VIC WALTERS also for ABC.
Sometimes the courts make the news before the media pick up on it. Today the federal Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit made the hit parade.
We (our government) brought Vatcharee Pronsivakulchai to the U.S. from Thailand to assist the DEA in a sting operation. Once we were done with her, we sought to deport her.
The Court said, "Don't think so."
Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz, a 40-year-old career US Navy officer who served as a legal consultant at Guantanamo, has just been criminally charged with mailing classified information to an unauthorized person. It seems that some time between 2004 and 2005---during the period that the US was declining to say who was being held at Gitmo---Diaz transmitted classified documents listing names and other identifying information of detainees. Nobody’s saying to whom the names were sent other than it’s someone at a US-located NGO. If convicted, Diaz could get more than 36 years in prison. WILL DUNHAM of Reuters and LARRY O’DELL of AP both have the story.
A year after Katrina’s devastation, New Orleans Judge Arthur Hunter says it’s way past time to start releasing some of the more than 3000 prisoners who’ve been jailed since before the storm hit without ever seeing a lawyer or being actually charged with a crime. Hunter plans to begin reviewing cases today. "It's something the entire country should be concerned about," he told ROBERT CROWE of the Houston Chronicle. "If we're still part of the United States, and the Constitution still means something, why is the New Orleans criminal justice system still in shambles?".
Tulane law professor, Katherine Mattes, talks to AMY GOODMAN at Democracy Now about Hunter's controversial move.
And in a related development, law students are now working overtime to handle some of these cases, according to LIZA PORTEUS of Fox News.
Winning this week’s award for worst handling of the incarcerated mentally ill, Garfield County, Colorado, is being sued by the ACLU for denying treatment to inmates with serious mental problems if the prisoners didn’t have enough $ in their jail accounts, according to Channel 9 News. Then when the inmates (predictably) acted out, the Garfield County folks strapped them into restraint chairs. Lovely.
Aliens can be denied entry into the United States for a variety of reasons. But U.S. citizens with passports, under normal circumstances, cannot. Maybe these are not normal times.
DEMIAN BULWA in the San Francisco Chronicle has the story. Immigration law scholars are pondering the statutory source of authority for this latest action by the feds.
Now, more than a decade later, are things getting better? Not really, writes MASON STOCKSTILL of the Ontario Daily Bulletin as part of a four-part series called Criminal Neglect.
Here’s a two-sentence summary of the latest news on two school integration cases (both loaded with far-reaching implications) that will be unfolding in the nation’s top court this fall, then heard by the Supremes in December:
“The Bush administration has urged the Supreme Court to strike down voluntary school integration programs across the nation that exclude some students because of their race.
“Administration lawyers filed briefs this week in pending cases from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., on the side of white parents who are challenging "racial balancing" programs as unconstitutional.” DAVID G. SAVAGE of the Los Angeles Times lays out and analyzes the details.
Tune In!
The U.S. Census Bureau is announcing a lot of interesting new information Tuesday on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005, containing findings from the Current Population Survey (CPS); and Income, Earnings, and Poverty Data from the 2005 American Community Survey (ACS). The CPS findings are national, while the ACS findings pertain to states, as well as counties and cities of 65,000 or more people. The ACS report also includes a comparison of earnings for men and women by selected characteristics, including industry and occupation.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/news_conferences/007338.html
In March of 2005, Peoria teenager, Montelle Talley, robbed middle-aged minister, Dwight Winnett, at gun point. Surprisingly, Winnett went to court and asked to personally mentor his robber rather than see him locked up. Under Illinois Balanced and Restorative Justice Initiative, the court agreed.
By law, balanced and restorative justice is supposed to be the philosophical underpinning of all juvenile court systems in Illinois. In reality, its implementation is spotty, but growing, writes PAM ADAMS of the Peoria Journal Star.
In jails it’s usually guy staffers who have sex with inmates (and there’s often force or "abuse of power" involved); in prisons it's more commonly the women on staff, and the sexual involvement is likely to be romantic, writes 2004-05 IJJ Criminal Justice Fellow, FRANK GREEN for the Richmond Times-Dispatch
This is a good news/bad news story. First the bad news: Last year, 44 of the 164,000 inmates in California prisons committed suicide---nearly twice as many as the 26 who took their lives in 2004, and almost double the national average for suicides in prisons. (Yet another un-cheery bellweather re: the overall health of the golden state’s correctional institutions.)
Now the good news: In a first-of-its-kind "Brother's Keeper" program, for the past 15 months a group of long-term San Quentin inmates have been learning to spot danger signs in fellow prisoners, in addition to being taught suicide prevention techniques. When the group graduated their course last week, they received lavish praise from SQ Warden Robert Ayers who said he hoped the program would expand, writes KRISTEN BENDER of the San Mateo County Times.
The fact that American citizens living in households with incomes of less than $15,000 a year are far less likely to vote than those in the $75,000 and above bracket is an issue that should be of concern to us all, according to COLE KRAWITZ AND JAY TOOLE writing for Newsday.
At present, there are approximately 1.2 million school age children with parents deployed in Iraq. In addition to the simple loss of the father or mother's presence for extended periods, an increasing number of kids are dealing with a parent’s death, injury and/or psychological disabilities. (1 in 6 soldiers in Iraq report symptoms of major depression, severe anxiety or PTSD.) As a consequence, a large number of those children are considered seriously "at risk" for behavioral and emotional problems, according to a research program called “Strengthening Military Families Following a Parent’s Wartime Deployment” at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute’s Center For Community Health.
The military itself has recognized the growing issue and has recently launched a program called “Project Ark” that provides intervention and support for some of the most affected teenagers, writes MONIQUE REUBEN for the American Forces Press Service.Study after study suggests that a close and supportive family relationship is one of the primary keys to successful prisoner rehabilitation and reintegration after release. Yet, many families of California prisoners say that much in the state’s visitor policy makes family contact unnecessarily difficult in the extreme. This “visiting abuse” will be the subject of a non-violent protest at Salinas Valley Prison tomorrow, Sunday, August 27.
There's a myth that crossing the border illegally is merely a "civil" offense, not a crime. Wrong. Crossing illegally is a federal misdemeanor. But the federal courts would come to a screeching halt if every border crosser were hauled before a magistrate.
On a small scale, however, the feds are doing just that. ALICIA A. CALDWELL has the story for the Associated Press.
London, Aug 24 (IANS) An Indian origin scientist, who had claimed he was the subject of racial discrimination at the hands of the scientist credited with creating the cloned sheep Dolly, has lost his case.
"Hector Vega is co-valedictorian of James Lick High School in East San Jose, winner of a $20,000 National Merit Scholarship and an entering freshman on a full scholarship at Santa Clara University.
He didn't speak a word of English five years ago when he arrived from Mexico, but he mastered the language in a year, advanced to honors classes and graduated from high school with a 4.0 grade-point average.
Vega is also an illegal immigrant." JESSIE MANGALIMAN in the San Jose Mercury News.
Today DHS Sec. Chertoff heads for South Texas in an attempt to move immigration reform off the dime. As Marc Cooper notes below ("White House Signals Immigration Compromise,") Bush may be willing to support the Pence / Hutchison plan.
This comes on the heels of Chertoff's announcement of 100% "catch-and-remove" on the southern and northern borders, as reported by LARA LAKES JORDAN for AP. (This begs the question, however, of how many are not being caught on any given day; catching and deporting one while ninety-nine make it through is no big deal. And we know that nearly half of the 12-20 million "illegals" are really "overstays," people who entered legally on visas and then never left.)
Meanwhile, business isn't buying what the Republicans are selling, as SARAH LUECK writes for the Wall Street Journal.
This from AP's Curt Woodward: OLYMPIA -- One of the first tests for Washington state's new gay civil rights law has an intriguing twist: The complaint was filed by a heterosexual woman.The state's discrimination watchdogs are investigating the case, which claims unmarried straight people should get the same domestic partner benefits as their gay and lesbian co-workers.But officials are treading carefully, Human Rights Commission Director Marc Brenman said, because upholding the claim could set a sweeping new precedent for Washington businesses.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/282225_gayrights23.html
"IXMIQUILPAN, Hidalgo — On a misty, moonless night, the group scurried down the canyon wall, their feet slipping in the ankle-high mud. The sirens grew louder as their guide, clad in a ski mask and known only as Poncho, urged them to run faster. "Hurry up! The Border Patrol is coming!"
A couple in matching designer tennis outfits loped awkwardly along, the boyfriend clutching a digital video camera and struggling to keep the pop-out screen steady.
The 20 or so people fleeing the fictional Border Patrol weren't undocumented immigrants; they were tourists about 700 miles from the border. Most are well-heeled professionals more likely to travel to the United States in an airplane than on foot." By JEREMY SCHWARTZ, Mexico City Bureau, Austin American-Statesman.
In the last eight years, California’s juvenile detention system, which houses an average of 4000 kids at any given time, has been the subject of 16 studies, investigations and/or audits— each exposing various aspects of the system's inadequate mental health care, abusive staff, poor educational services, appalling safety conditions, and a host of other problems. So what has been done as a result of the investigations et al to fix all these deficiencies? Precious little, reports NOAM N. LEVEY for the Los Angeles Times. Most of the facilities are “in the same woeful condition as ten years ago."
This from AP: Legislatures around the country are passing state laws to get tough on illegal immigration, but legal experts say many of those laws will turn out to be unconstitutional. More than 550 bills relating to illegal immigration were introduced in statehouses this year, and at least 77 were enacted, according to a survey presented last week at the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures.However, NCSL analyst Ann Morse told lawmakers at the conference that a 1986 federal law forbids states from enacting stricter criminal or civil penalties that those adopted by Congress.
http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8JJN9JO0.html